Monday, September 30, 2013

THE SCIENCE BEHIND VIRIDIAN

Sometimes real facts are so amazing, better than most things you could make up. Here are some real, biological facts that gave me ideas for the plots of Viridian and its sequel, Viridian:Venus Angel.

CHLOROPHYLL SKIN
In Viridian humans get infected with a plant virus that gives them chlorophyll skin. Their skin turns green. Like this!

So do their fingernails, hair and teeth. They have freaky green eyes. They call themselves Verdans.
Here's a description of Viridian, after he turns Verdan: His alien eyes rippled with eerie green lights. His green skin looked as supple and smooth as water lily leaves.

Here's Jay's Gran: Jay stared at her face, her green skin clammy with water drops, her hair fluffed out aroundher head like green candyfloss. She wasn't his Gran anymore. She was one of them.

Verdans are a new species. They're animals who behave like plants. Through their chlorophyll skin they take in carbon dioxide and give out oxygen, like plants do.
But no real animal can do this, can it?
Amazingly, yes it can. And it doesn't even have to catch a plant virus to do it! Meet this sea slug. It's what gave me the idea for the Verdans.

These are green sea slugs that have the tongue-twisting scientific name of Elysia viridis - 'viridis' means green. These animals are green because they eat seaweeds that contain chlorophyll - the green stuff that plants use to carry out photosynthesis. Photosynthesis is a process where plants use energy from sunlight to turn carbon dioxide and water into sugars that then they use for food. Most animals (like us humans) digest chlorophyll when they eat it. But these amazing little creatures store it in their skin, where it lets them photosynthesise like a plant - and like a Verdan!Image source: Genet, via Wikipedia Commons http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Elysia_viridis_2.jpg

ETIOLATION

Down in the Etiolation Caves, the monstrous plant/human hybrid Viridian punishes his enemies, or any Verdan who threatens his power. He does this by depriving them of sunlight.

Here's when Jay finds Teal, Viridian's rival, dying in the Etiolation Caves. Jay sprang back, sour bile rising in his throat. There was a Verdan down there .... her limbs were like soft yellow jelly: she couldn't lift them. Fungus had invaded her weakened body. Spores, like white dust, puffed out of her skin .... she smelled of mouldy graveyards."

Exactly the same thing happens to real plants , when they're kept in the dark.
They go sickly yellow, become jelly-like, spindly and floppy, just like Viridian's poor prisoners.

This is a buttercup plant that's suffering from etiolation because it has been kept in the dark. Its stems are twisted and deathly white because it has lost all its green chlorophyll. Its tiny, shrivelled leaves are a sickly yellow colour.

And this is where I got the idea for Viridian's terrible Etiolation Caves!

CULTIVARS AND IMMUNE HUNTERS

Ordinary Verdans are gentle and peaceful. But there are other Verdans called Cultivars (the cruel tyrant Viridian becomes their Supreme Commander).

Cultivars were elite Verdans. They were as tough and competitive as the world's most aggressive plants. Plants like bramble that steals other plant's nutrients, shades them from the life-giving sun, strangles them with spiny arms so it alone can thrive.

A bramble plant, spiny and aggressive

But, among the Cultivars, there's an even scarier group. Immune Hunters are elite warriors. Their job is to hunt down and kill the few humans, like Jay, who are immune to the plant virus. They have plant weapons growing from their green skin, like cruel , hooked thorns, strangling creepers or poison spines.

An Immune Hunter's hand with poison spines. Note its green arm, as snaky and supple as a plant creeper

In the book an Immune Hunter with different plant weapons attacks Jay: She had a thin creeper growing from her wrist ......... it shot through the air towards Jay. Its whippy end waved frantically, seeking something to cling to. It had minute, stickypads on the underneath, to help it fasten on, then strangle and suck nutrients from whatever living thing it attached to.

This Immune Hunter is a terrifying Green Vampire (read more about them in Viridian:Venus Angel!) who feed off other Verdans. But, in the plant world, are there any real vampire creepers?
Yes, there are! Meet the weird and sinister plant Dodder. It gave me the idea for Green Vampires.

When dodder seeds germinate they produce a slender, twining thread that you can see at the bottom of this picture. When the thread plugs itself into its victim (usually a stinging nettle) it sucks food from its host and quickly grows much larger, curling tightly around its victim like a python.

As dodder curls around its victim it burrows into its host wherever it touches it, sucking out more nutrients and growing bigger and stronger every day.

They've started to catch horrible plant diseases on their green skin. Like this one:

The orange patches on this leaf are a rust fungus. Its spores invade and then send microscopic threads through the leaf, feeding on it, then ...........

.......... they erupt through the leaf surface and burst open like plague pustules, releasing thousands more spores.

Sick and dying Verdans rush to take the plant virus antidote discovered by Toni's scientist Dad, Dr Moran. Most are saved when they become 100% human again.
But the Cultivars don't want to be cured. Ordinary plant diseases can't kill them; they are too strong. Then a terrible plant fungus called The Black Spot invades their Headquarters. It spreads like wildfire, eats away their skin and turns them to black slime.
But I didn't make the deadly Black Spot fungus up. It really exists. It attacks and kills real plants. Here it is, on a leaf. Imagine that all over your body!

CARNIVOROUS PLANTS
The Cultivars grow giant carnivorous plants like sundews, pitcher plants and Venus Fly Traps. Carnivorous plants are the supreme predators of the plant world. They're highly efficient killing machines that feed off insects they catch. But, of course, giant carnivorous plants can eat bigger prey. In the book Jay gets dropped in a giant pitcher plant by Viridian.

Jay was in the swollen base of a purple tube. The walls were slippery and smooth so prey couldn't escape --- He was sitting in something wet, the remains of the pitcher plant's last meal. He put his hand down and touched what felt like a small, slimy bone."Yurgh!" He snatched his hand back out of the stinking soup.More liquid was rising. He stood up, desperately punching the walls, kicking them. He knew what was happening. The pitcher was filling with water. The plant was drowning him. When he stopped struggling, its digestive juices would flow from the pitcher walls and dissolve his body, absorbing his nutrients into itself.

But are there any pitcher plants that catch animals? Well, none big enough to catch humans. But some can catch reptiles and even rats. This one has caught a lizard.

Leaves of Venus fly trap are like spring-loaded traps with interlocking teeth around their edges. When an insect lands on the leaf and touches trigger hairs the trap snaps shut in a fraction of a second ........

............. so that its victim is trapped in a cage. There's no escape. Then the two halves of the trap slowly squeeze more tightly, crushing their victim to death and then digesting it.

It's the leaves of a fly trap like this (only much bigger) that are grafted onto Toni's back as wings.

This is Jay's first sight of his girlfriend, Toni, after Cultivar surgeons have turned her from human girl into a deadly warrior they call a Venus Angel.

An angel rose above the courtyard trees and hovered there, beating its green wings. Except it wasn't a heavenly angel. It had green skin. And the wings on its back weren't feathery white, but green, edged with spines like teeth and deep blood-red inside."Toni!" gasped Jay.The Venus Angel slowly flapped its beautiful, deadly wings. It gazed down at Jay. Its green eyes seemed totally alien - there was nothing human in them at all.

The Venus Angel (formerly know as Toni Moran!) flies away, pursued by cannibalistic Green Vampires and human vigilantes who hunt down and shoot any remaining Verdans for sport. InViridian: Venus AngelJay desperately tries to find her before they do.
But what's happened to the monstrous tyrant Viridian? Is he really dead, as everyone (except Dr. Moran, Toni's scientist Dad) believes?
Read Viridian: Venus Angel to find out. And look out for my next post of amazing but true facts: "The Power of Fungi"!

And, one final amazing fact! Just after I'd written "Viridian:Venus Angel", I saw this street entertainer.